Six telecom towers come up at Mangar

After real estate companies, forests off the Gurgaon-Faridabad highway near Mangar Bani are facing a threat from telecom companies who are installing a number of mobile towers in the area allegedly without the permission of the forest department.TNN | March 27, 2016, 07:34 IST

New Delhi: After real estate companies, forests off the Gurgaon-Faridabad highway near Mangar Bani are facing a threat from telecom companies who are installing a number of mobile towers in the area allegedly without the permission of the forest department.

The area falls under sections 4 and 5 of the Punjab Land Preservation Act, a “deemed forest” where no non-forest activities are allowed without permission.

More than six mobile towers have already been installed. A clearing has been made in each of these areas to install them. However, the forest department recently sealed a tower and seized other materials after they were alerted by local activists.

“We seized the material and issued notices to the company because the activity is illegal. If they are allowed to install, people can even enter the forest and start building. Moreover, these towers will cause disturbance because a separate chamber will be made for a security guard. The impact of radiation on birds and wildlife is also not studied properly,” said a Haryana forest department official.

Activists also questioned the need for so many towers inside the forest. “There is signal all the time here. What’s the need to install more towers without permission?” asked Sunil Harsana, a villager and activist.

MoEF had issued an advisory on the impact of electro-magnetic radiation in 2012 based on an expert committee reoport (EMR) that indicated that EMR interferes with biological systems. MoEF had advised telecom companies, “to prevent overlapping of high-radiation fields, new towers should not be permitted within a radius of one kilometre of the existing towers. Sharing of passive infrastructure if made mandatory for Telecom Service Providers can minimise need for having additional towers. If new towers must be built, these should be constructed with utmost care and precautions so as not to obstruct flight path of birds, and also not to increase the combined radiations from all towers in the area.”

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